


Bookmark

by TheFilthWithin (Flatfootmonster)



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Makeup Sex, Moving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 01:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19453696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flatfootmonster/pseuds/TheFilthWithin
Summary: “What are you doing?” I ask. But I know. I know, and my heart aches with how much I love him.“I narrowed it down,” he says, with a shrug; nonchalant as ever when he is being a fucking God.





	Bookmark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coolauntskam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolauntskam/gifts).



> This is for a girl who is having a tough time.
> 
> I hope this makes you feel a little better <3
> 
> Love, Becs
> 
> P.S. I suck at endings...
> 
> P.P.S this isn't edited, so sorry if it's... meh

The side of the van is cold against my back, it grounds my thoughts before they can spiral. It’s easily done at the moment.

I like change, I like newness, but I think I underestimated how much this amount of change might fry me. I’ll be fine, I just didn’t see this wall coming.

Walls surround me. Cardboard box walls with Isak’s neat handwriting on them: bathroom, kitchen, living room, and so on. Everything is organised, and it’s here, but I can’t see it. I trust him to do it right, better than I can do these things, but now I’m worrying over small precious things that might have been left or lost. How will I know they’re all here?

I flex my hands—I won’t do what they itch for. I can’t open the boxes, I can’t tip them out onto the pavement. I won’t do it, but there’s an urge in me fighting hard for that. 

It’s a moment. It will pass. I just wish it had passed without me opening my mouth.

It could have been anyone. Isak told me to pack up my things and I kept forgetting, so he started before I did. There was no malice in his actions, he just knew I’d follow if he started. But he’d already packed the books— _ my  _ books. Including the one on my side of the bed, the one I’d been reading. 

It’s old and worn. I don’t read like everyone else, I dip in and out. I’ve read Billy Pilgrim’s travels through time, front to back, and up and down. With that book you don’t necessarily have to read it from one to the end. It’s how it’s made. 

But that’s not the point. 

My marker is the point. I never used a bookmark, I can’t keep track of them. I used to keep my place with a slip of paper. That changed a few months back. He was studying and I was drinking tea. There was quiche; it was the special. I ate slowly, drank slowly, watched people meander, studied Isak while he studied the book. His quick hand made notes on our receipt, darting figures and factors that make no sense to me. But they caught my eye, the way his hand held the pen, the way he spread the ink across the paper, the way the symbols and marks curled and curved. It was hypnotic.

He’d snorted when he caught me watching. I smiled at him, shrugging. If I had to wait he would have to put up with whatever might entertain me, and in that moment it was the movement of his hand over pure white. He shook his head. Then the pen moved, and I grinned, absorbed as the motions went from a fluid rhythm, when he wasn’t thinking about it, to a very childlike deliberateness. 

He drew a heart, paused to tap the tip of the pen against his lips before it returned to the white, and he drew an E in the middle. It was silly—simple. But it was closure on a moment that came before, a completion of a cycle. And something calmed in me to see that E, clear in black ink. A gesture returned. 

The study had drawn to a close because then he was drinking the tea from my lips, and sampling the quiche from my mouth. The meandering around us dissipated to misty clouds and somehow we were home, and his skin was on mine, and I was inside of him while he drew marks down my back.

The next day, when I reclaimed my abandoned jeans from the floor, pushing my hand into the pocket in search of my phone, my fingers found crisp ink marbled white. The receipt had come with us; the glyphs I didn’t understand surrounded by the love that I just knew, felt, and worshipped.

There are times when nothing makes much sense but him, and the paper seemed to demonstrate that.

So, into Slaughterhouse it had gone, to mark my spot; my time travelling bookmark. But now it’s gone, maybe to Tralfamadore, like Billy. It probably fell from between the pages and onto the carpet, thrown out, or it slipped between floorboards.

Either way it’s lost and, although it was a small thing, moving so far, and this new house we will put our things into, this new training that awaits me, the next stage of Isak’s studies, new friends, and a new sky above our heads…

I’m freaking out—or I  _ was _ . I’m calmer now, but not before I used my mouth. 

It could have been anyone, him or me or  _ anyone _ , that has been in our room—it happens that we get intruded upon. But my mouth wanted to blame someone and so it did. And I hate it when he inhales, and his eyes search the ceiling; he’s mentally scrolling through all of the comebacks he wants to fire off but never will. He holds on to them, refashions them, evaluates every word so that when he does speak it’s sense. It’s logic. It doesn’t hurt like my quick words do. 

This time he sighed and went to the kitchen. I heard a drawer open and cutlery was picked up and placed into a new box. Not just in  _ any _ way, it was calmly done—purposefully. Not thrashing about, no stomping, no slamming doors—like me. He’s cooling off and I’m a fucking asshole. 

So I came here. I’m hiding in the van we hired to move our shit from point A to point B because I’m an asshole.

The cool of the van dampens my humid struggles. But I need to move, I can’t slack. Not when he’s already done most of the work. I have to let these small precious things go that could be lost. So what if they are? They were with me at one point in time, therefore they will always be with me. The one thing I can’t let slip between the floorboards is Isak. 

The van rocks when I stand, stooped so I don’t bang my head, I weave out from the box walls. It’s a short path back to the apartment, back to where I can hear movement. It’s not cutlery now, but rustling. When I enter the kitchen, Isak’s back is to me. He’s kneeling, half lost in a bag of rubbish. When he looks back over his shoulder, there's a strange mix of amusement and embarrassment at being caught out. 

The amusement takes precedent as he snorts a quick laugh, shakes his head and sits back, leaning against the kitchen drawers. He wipes his hands on his jeans. There’s an array of items placed out on the kitchen floor—among neatly packed boxes of seasoning—awaiting inspection. 

“What are you doing?” I ask. But I know. I  _ know _ , and my heart aches with how much I love him. 

“I narrowed it down,” he says, with a shrug; nonchalant as ever when he is being a fucking God. How much patience can one person have? His hand gestures at three items placed separately from the rest.

I’m sliding down the cupboard, at his side, before I know what I’m doing. “To what?” But I’m scanning the things he’s pointed at, already picking out a white slither of paper, crumpled now and with ketchup staining it. 

“There was a napkin from KB, but I doubt it was that. A receipt from the seven eleven for 210 kroner at 12.42. Then there’s some of my scribbles on another receipt—from that coffee shop,  _ months _ ago. My money is on that,” he said, stabbing his finger where my eyes are rested, on the red stained inky piece of paper. 

I never told him what it was, just that the bookmark was gone. That he’d “lost my fucking bookmark”, to be precise. He knows I don’t use a bookmark.

Another wall hits me, this time it has remorse scrawled on it in my messy handwriting. I want to say sorry but I hate that word. 

“Just tell me if I got it right, cos I feel like I need some reward for wading through shit,” he snickers, grimacing down at his hand before he scrubs it against his leg a second time.

He always seems to read my mind. He says I read his, too. I guess we match, and I know I help him. We balance each other—I  _ know _ that now. I shun the voice that tells me he can do better; it shrinks to a whisper. 

I nod as I smile. “But, um…” he frowns at me when I meet his eyes. “I kinda wanna keep that seven eleven receipt, too. 12:42?”

His eyes roll back, but he’s smiling too. “Sure. Why not?” 

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper.” 

“We’re moving, it’s stressful.” 

“Life is stressful. It’s no excuse.”

He looks at me, long and hard. “Even, it’s no big deal. We found it.” 

“ _ You _ found it.”

He groans in impatience, or maybe defeat. There’s a definite unwillingness to take any praise right now—not that that’s what I'm doing, I’m just stating facts. “Well, whatever. It’s done. OK?” 

“I owe you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t stop I’ll put you in a box, and you’ll ride with our shit in the back the entire fucking way.” 

I feel my grin before I know it’s there. “What are you gonna write on  _ my _ box?”

His hard stare turns softer, warmer. His cheek dimples when the smirk wins. “Bed.” 

I mock indignation and he laughs. The sound makes my gut tighten. The air is easier to breathe. The rush of surviving a humid storm floods my veins. "Is that all I'm good for, Valtersen?" 

He licks his lips and that tightness coils. "Right now it is." Its murmured. Hummed. Vibrations skitter along my skin. Quick fights and faster love. I have no complaints, and it looks like he has no regrets. 

"Don't threaten me with a good time." 

His eyes widen. Isak isn't a person to turn down a dare, even if you didn't mean it as a dare. 

But I fall into it, close my eyes before his mouth lands on mine, before the cool tiles press to my back. This time there's no tempering the warmth in me, and I don't want it to. This heat is all for Isak. 

It's a scramble for flesh, but just enough will do right now. There's only respite from the heavy breaths and fevered kisses when Isak reaches for something. I guess there's something to be said for things being boxed up and at hand. 

"Oil?" I snort a laugh. “Are you gonna  _ baste _ me?”

He shakes his head, but there’s levity. I’ll never get tired of making him smile. “I read it somewhere, that you can use olive oil.”

“ _ You read it somewhere _ ?”

“Shush. Trust me.” 

I do, and I will. Besides, neither of us are running off to find the bedroom box right now. So I shush and pull him back to my mouth. And maybe he had aspirations for foreplay, but right now I need him. Right now, on the kitchen floor, for the last time in this place we’ve called home, I need him as close to me as he can get—to feel his heartbeat within me. 

He gets it from the insistent way I pull at his body. We’re a tangle of clothes and limbs, there’s rubbish and boxes spread about us, I just kicked something over, but I don’t give a shit. He’s here, on my body. He’s here, and I’m ready. 

The bittersweet ache bleeds into me; he’s inside of me, and I’m drawing marks up his back already. I wanted to feel that intensity, and he knows, pushing against me like it’s the last thing we'll ever do. He’s at my neck and I breathe him in. I can taste the pages of my book on his skin—like he’s the marker that guides me in a life that sometimes seems to zip and spiral through time. As long as I can feel him, I know where I am. 

And as long as he feels me, he knows he’s alive. I can hear it in the way he’s repeating my name, mixed with cuss words. There's a gasp, and I groan because I know what’s coming. 

“I love you.” His tone aches like I do. The ache that says he wants to be further, deeper, firmly impacted in the flesh of my body—forever. I want him there, and I want to be in him the same way. 

Has anything ever felt as good as this frantic fuck, on a half clean floor, surrounded by packing boxes? Has anything been as pure as the sweat, built from the day’s hard work, that’s layered between our skin? If it has I can’t remember it. 

There’s no need to say it back—he knows—but I want to. “Baby, I love you— _ fuck _ , Isak…” My words turn into groans, too loud for the thin walls. We’ve never worried about that before. Why change a habit of a lifetime?

His grip on me is desperate and familiar. He’s coming, and the pace is intense—the world is a blur. He comes as he tells me how fucking amazing I am. Lips work like full stops as they kiss along my neck and jaw, punctuating his broken, ragged sentences brimming with praise.

No small voice can be heard to tell me I don’t deserve this.

We slow, we roll like the tide. Ebbing and flowing, being as one for as long as we can. And, as usual, the waves are crested by laughter—weak as it is. 

“You’ve distracted me,” he says, out of breath and propped on an elbow. But he looks ready to collapse.

“I think that’s my superpower,” I muse, my hand moves to cup his face. He sighs, eyes fluttering closed. 

“I’m not complaining.” 

Chewing my lip, a sigh flows out of me, joining his. “I think I probably fucked up the schedule.” There was a timing schedule, because  _ of course _ there was a timing schedule; Isak was in charge of the organisation. 

“There’s some wiggle room built in.” His smirk is full force as he opens one eye to peer down at me. 

I snort. “ _ Wiggle room _ ?” He nods. “You think of everything.” 

Isak lowers himself, mouth meeting mine. “You’re my everything.” 

“God you’re corny. I love it.” It’s muttered before we’re kissing again. Languid and slow, but I want him all over again. Then his mouth is on my chest. 

“Aren’t we done with wiggle room?” I ask, fingers stroking through his hair. I’ll have to remind him to comb it before we leave—it’s as fucked as I am right now. 

Isak reaches my navel before he looks up at me. Time is beginning to unravel around us. “I’m not done yet,” then he winks before he adds, “I owe you.”


End file.
